By Peter Rainer, Bloomberg News
After John Schlesinger made "Midnight Cowboy," which won the Oscar in 1969 for best picture and director, he had carte blanche to make any...
By Nina Metz
Hosting the 70th Golden Globes Sunday in Beverly Hills, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler proved it was possible to skewer their Hollywood colleagues...
Christopher Borrelli
Last month after a screening, even as the lights came up in the theater, I could feel "Zero Dark Thirty" fading, its images and impact...
By Luis Gomez
You won't see Marlon Wayans reprising his role as Ripcord in "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" this spring — he and most of his co-stars were...
By Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers
Marlon Wayans wrings every last down-and-dirty giggle out of a single joke in "A Haunted House," his return to "Scary Movie" territory, in...
Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips makes his picks for who should win and who will win the major categories for the 2013 Academy Awards:
Michael Phillips
With a conspicuous diss of Kathryn Bigelow, the un-nominated director of “Zero Dark Thirty,” the Academy Awards nominations were...
Michael Phillips
One hundred and one years ago, D.W. Griffith gave us "The Musketeers of Pig Alley," often credited as the first gangster film, and once...
Michael Phillips
We know how "Amour" will end, at least for one of its characters.
Michael Phillips
A triumph of production design but a pretty dull kill-'em-up otherwise, the post-World War II-set "Gangster Squad" comes from the director...
Nina Metz
"I am a child stuck between two countries," says 15-year-old Fang "Jenni" Lee in the insightful new documentary "Somewhere Between." Adopted...
By Gary Goldstein, Special to Tribune Newspapers
It's a testament to writer-director Jim Hemphill's enjoyably chatty script and to the hand-in-glove performances of his charismatic leads...
Michael Phillips
"No ordinary policeman": This is how director Claude Sautet's intriguing 1971 drama "Max and the Junkmen" describes the Max of the title,...
By Mark Olsen
Something like a glammed-up re-imagining of the United Nations, year-in, year-out the foreign-language film category at the Oscars is a home...
Michael Phillips
Michael Haneke's devastating "Amour" opens Friday in Chicago. And since its Cannes Film Festival premiere in May, this tale of a long-...
Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips picks 10 movies you should see in the coming months.
By Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers
The first movie to go into wide release in 2013 misses, by mere days, a qualifying run for the 2012 Oscars. Thus "Texas Chainsaw 3D" can't...
Michael Phillips
To consider what director Kathryn Bigelow has accomplished in "Zero Dark Thirty," imagine the events depicted by the story if they'd been...
By Gary Goldstein, Special to Tribune Newspapers
The sharp workplace comedy "Price Check" is a you-are-there slip-and-slide that follows a supermarket chain's pricing-department exec...
Michael Phillips
A determined weepie, "Any Day Now" lives for such scenes as an adoptive parent being pulled away, screaming, from the child with Down...
By Sheri Linden, Special to Tribune Newspapers
For 12-year-old Simon, the resilient central character in the Swiss drama "Sister," the ski season is a time of particular purpose. His...
Nina Metz
There is a science to the way products are placed on supermarket shelves, and it is one that can stealthily influences our choices.
Michael Phillips
"When was the last time you stood up and applauded a movie?" Filmgoers of a certain age may recall the question posed by the posters for the...
Michael Phillips
Famously, the old Logan Theatre at 2646 N. Milwaukee Ave. used to smell like pee. Urban legends abound of the stink detectable all over...
Michael Phillips
"That pianola sure brings back memories," says Orson Welles, entranced by Marlene Dietrich's bordello background music in "Touch of Evil." A...
Michael Phillips
For a fellow who's just been promoted to vice president of land management by his multibillion-dollar natural gas company, the character...
Michael Phillips
Billy Crystal and Bette Midler do all they can (which is a lot) to entertain us in "Parental Guidance," but the movie keeps getting in the...
By Oliver Gettell
With "Django Unchained," writer-director Quentin Tarantino has once again turned history on its head to carry out an audacious revenge...
Michael Phillips
After making itself available in November through various on-demand viewing options, Edward Burns' latest little picture, "The Fitzgerald...
Michael Phillips
Hiding inside the identity of someone else — someone recently disappeared, or murdered, for example — is a theme running through...
Tribune movie critic Michael Phillips picks the top 10 movies of the year.
Michael Phillips
In "Django Unchained," which has its moments of devilish glee in and among dubious wallows in numbing slaughter, writer-director-trash...
Michael Phillips
Considered outside the context of the bloody December so far, "Jack Reacher" does its work sleekly and well. Writer-director Christopher...
Michael Phillips
More like "This Is Whiny," "This Is 40" has its share of clever, zingy material, proving that writer-director Judd Apatow has lost none of...
Michael Phillips
Everything that was false about the tsunami sequence in the recent Clint Eastwood film "Hereafter" — the bland overview perspectives,...
Nina Metz
It was a notable year for Chicago's film and TV industry, both for projects that came — and those that didn't. First, the good news....
By Richard Knight Jr., Special to the Tribune
As a relatively broke college student, Chicago-based writer Rob Christopher didn't have the cash to rent movies from a video store. Instead,...
By Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers
Cirque du Soleil movies are a lot like ballet films — long on beauty and artistry, short on story.
Michael Phillips
I wouldn't be surprised if "Les Miserables" became the most popular movie musical since "Mamma Mia!" On stage, both diversions were, and...
Michael Phillips
Well, it's a masterpiece compared with "Little Fockers," the last movie featuring Barbra Streisand.
By Roger Moore, McClatchy Newspapers
Disney-Pixar realized it had hit on a can't-miss formula for animated blockbusters about the time "Monsters, Inc." came out in 2001.
Michael Phillips
For Bill Murray, playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the new film “Hyde Park on Hudson” meant risking some serious derision....
Michael Phillips
The music’s the best thing about the peculiar, demurely prurient “Hyde Park on Hudson,” starring Bill Murray as Franklin...
Michael Phillips
Nina Metz
About halfway through writing the script for "The Fitzgerald Family Christmas" (which opens at the Wilmette Theatre next week), Edward Burns...
Michael Phillips
The Irish horror film "Citadel" makes solo parenthood an exceptional challenge, what with the mutant, hooded, devil-eyed, baby-stealing...
Michael Phillips
My Academy Awards predictions — and honestly, why not start now, a month before the nominations are announced? — carry an odor...